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Modern Rendition of Cymbeline to Premier this April at NYC’s Historic Theatre 80 St. Marks

Director/Producer Alexis Confer and Art for Progress Founder Frank Jackson are proud to announce their upcoming production of Cymbeline at Theatre 80 St. Marks this spring. This production will use the classic language of Shakespeare, but approach the Bard’s “fairytale” with a modern lens. The audience will be transported to a world floating between the blurred morality and frenetic energy of a Vegas-like kingdom and the stark, colorful beauty of the American Southwest.

In order to bring a fresh, nuanced and uniquely comedic performance to the stage, the company is intentionally made up a variety of performance backgrounds from musicians to stand up comedians, from classically trained Shakespearean actors, to improvisers. Led by Confer’s direction, the tight-knit cast has done several Shakespearean shows together in 2015-2016 – Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream produced by OFFLINE Productions and Much Ado About Nothing produced by Art for Progress.

Most importantly, the goal of the show is to create a great live performance experience while raising awareness and funds for arts education. All profits from the show will go to Art for Progress’s programs for children and young adults – helping to empower NYC’s young artists.

Art for Progress’ Arts Education Community provides under-served youth with dynamic artistic programming that promotes reflection and self-expression. By connecting youth with working artists, their communities and each other, we hope to transform the way they see themselves and the world around them.

Ill-assorted chairs and benches wrapped around a circular runway. The models bundled up in overcoats and jackets and holding what looks like trash bags, lumbered down the pathway in somber time. To round out their looks, some models had their legs wrapped in plastic bag like material.

As Daisuke Obana delineates in show notes: “As our designer traveled the cities of America, he witnessed the various ways in which people there lived on the streets and the knowledge they have acquired while doing so. His observations of these so-called homeless or street people revealed that them [sic] to be full of clever ideas for covering the necessities of life. Space blankets or moving blankets can be fashioned into coats for cold days, and plastic bags can double as waterproof boots when it rains. This season features designs that embrace their unique style of combining traditionally contrasting elements, such as unconventional layering or senses of color, along with experimental sizing.”

In reality, there are over 600,000 homeless people in the United States. In New York City alone, homelessness has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression. And about one-fifth of the homeless population suffers from mental illness.

In short, homelessness is NOT an experience that ever needs to glamorized. And as Fashionista points out: “Obana’s efforts, focused purely on aesthetics, erased the humanity and the dignity of homeless people.”

Tomer Heymann’s documentary about choreographer Ohad Naharin, Mr. Gaga: A True Story of Love andDance, begins with a rehearsal scene in which a dancer falls backward repeatedly, as Naharin encourages her to “let go.” This painstaking (and literally painful) process is familiar to most dancers and anyone who’s witnessed the art of making tough choreography look easy. In the case of the iconoclastic Naharin, artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company and founder of the Gaga (no relation to Lady) movement technique, the choreography is both incredibly demanding and extremely rewarding, as his dancers and audiences can attest. Mr. Gaga, which delves into Naharin’s creativity as well as his personal life, includes interviews, archival footage and many performance clips. The result is a visually thrilling and soul-satisfying portrait of a remarkable talent and individual.

Born and raised on a kibbutz, Naharin was an instinctive dancer as a child, influenced by his music-loving mother Tzofia. Home movies show bucolic kibbutz life as an idyllic setting for a creative child. Later, Naharin served as an entertainer in the Israeli Army, during which time he first began to create dances. The choreographer, who narrates much of his own story, explains how the “absurd theater” of performing for soldiers influenced dances such Sadeh21. We also learn via an early interview that he began dancing because of a family tragedy, a dramatic story that will be revisited later in the film.

Courtesy of Batsheva Dance Company

Naharin, whose naturally loose and sinuous body was seemingly built to dance, took classes with the Batsheva company after the army. He came to the admiring attention of Martha Graham, then working with the company, which led to a move to New York City where he was accepted at both Julliard and the American Ballet Theater School, despite his advanced age. Later, he was invited to join Maurice Béjart’s Ballet of the 20th Century. Béjart’s technique, like Graham’s, left him cold and he soon began putting together his own contemporary dances. Around the same time, he fell in love with Mari Kajiwara, a dancer with Alvin Ailey; they married and she joined Naharin’s multicultural troupe.

As the film shows in myriad clips, his highly idiosyncratic choreography is organic, percussive, repetitive and cathartic. Instinctively drawn to feminine movement, Naharin believes that “Dance in its true form is the opposite of macho.” Though the film highlights Naharin’s prodigious talents, it doesn’t shy away from his failings. An often intimidating taskmaster, he yells at his dancers during a performance. “Don’t fuck with me. My life depends on you,” he reminds them before a show. (No pressure!) According to one dancer, crying and screaming occurred on a daily basis and company members often walked out, but they always came back because “the work was worth it.” Naharin also expresses great appreciation for his dancers, who are selected for their ability to bring something of themselves to his work.

Photo: Tony Lewis

Over the years, the demands of dance took a toll on his body. At one point, told he wouldn’t be able to dance— or maybe even walk—again, due to nerve damage, he began developing Gaga, a healing movement language. Natalie Portman attests to the benefits of Gaga and we see all ages and body types move with abandon in a few class clips. (Today, it’s taught at most major dance studios.)

When Naharin returned to Israel to direct Batsheva in 1990, he almost immediately transformed the company’s staid, older audience into a young, hip crowd with energetic dances such as Kyr and Anaphase. He became a sort of cultural hero in 1998 when Batsheva refused to perform at the nation’s 50th anniversary celebration after being pressured to wear more modest costumes. The film becomes poignant when Naharin suffers a great personal loss, though he channels his grief (like everything else) into movement and continues working.

An uplifting film about a man clearly born to move and create, Mr. Gaga is a revealing portrait of a true visionary, as singular and uncompromising as they come.

Mr. Gaga: A True Story of Love and Dance is playing at the Elinor Bunim Monroe Film Center (Lincoln Center) and Film Forum.

With an unprecedented climate of change and concern dawning in the United States, Art for Progress arts education programs are more essential than ever. AFP is embracing the ever-growing need for alternative and supplemental art, music, theater, and fashion programs for young people representing the voice of true expression in our city. Once again this has been an exciting semester for existing Art for Progress arts education programs in New York City’s public schools, and there are some new programs in the works for the second half of the school year.

Our flagship music program at Humanities Preparatory Academy, which includes school day sessions as well as after school, is flourishing and has produced and cultivated a bunch of wonderful talent this semester. Everyone at the school is looking forward to the talent show on February 16th, which will include solo vocal and instrumental performances, and a variety of ensemble pieces and even a dance number. AFP’s after school program at the James Baldwin School is also going strong and was well represented in the recent school-wide talent show on Friday, January 20. Students from both schools have been working hard after school every day, choosing songs and rehearsing. Especially impressive is the spirit of mutual encouragement among the students as the shows approach.

As for AFP’s Young Adult Music Enrichment Program, tracking is nearly completed on Bronx rock band Statik Vision’s full-length album, and we are preparing to start mixing, while recording sessions for their brother band Big Sweater’s album are in full swing. This week’s sessions focused on the drum tracks for Big Sweater’s song “Platform Stare”, which is sure to be an anthem for our times. Both albums should be ready for release dates this summer, so keep an ear out!

Unfortunately, as a result of a heartbreaking turn of events regarding budget cuts due to a lack of enrollment at Hudson High School; AFP has had to suspend our program there. This is particularly troubling because the students that had been participating in that program are some of the most driven and engaged I have had the pleasure of working with, so if anyone out there in Bloglandia has a couple thousand dollars they want to write off, please contact me at baritor@live.com. Your contribution would go to cultivate some of the city’s most promising, diverse and dedicated young talent.

On the upside, we are starting a brand new after school program at Brooklyn’s International High School, and the James Baldwin School is looking to add a new theater arts program. We are also in discussions with the Essex Street Academy to start to implement programs there.

All in all, as the climate of American education continues to move farther away from the arts, which are essential for cultivating abstract thought and creative, innovative ideas, we at Art for Progress feel the work we are doing is becoming ever more essential and we look forward to pushing against the prevailing trends to support the next generation of New York City’s artists and musicians.

A solid directorial and screenwriting debut by Australian actor and theater director Simon Stone, The Daughter borders on melodrama, but still manages to pack a considerable wallop. Stone originally converted Henrik Ibsen’s 1884 play The Wild Duck into a production set in present-day Australia for Sidney’s Belvoir St Theatre in 2011. Like that version, some of the original story’s details have been stripped away for The Daughter, yet the film retains a Nordic moodiness. As with live plays, the actors often sell the thing and The Daughter is no exception; Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neill, Miranda Otto and Ewen Leslie, especially, deliver intense performances that make the film’s escalating drama compelling throughout.

These events are set in motion by Christian (Paul Schneider), who returns to his Australian hometown after 15 years in the U.S. to attend the wedding of his father Henry (Rush)—a wealthy lumber mill owner—to his much younger housekeeper, Anna. There is obvious friction, as the son seems disgusted both by Anna’s age and the fact that his father is still using the car that belonged to his late wife, Christian’s mother.

Photo: Mark Rogers

Complicating things, Henry has just shut down the mill, leading to an exodus of unemployed workers and their families from the town. Christian’s childhood friend Oliver (Leslie) is one worker who hasn’t left; he and his wife Charlotte (Otto) dote on their daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young in a tough role), a bright high schooler who is also very close to Oliver’s father Walter (Neill). The latter, a rough-hewn but decent sort, keeps an animal sanctuary behind the house, where wounded creatures can recuperate. His newest rescue is a duck that Henry has shot. (Yes, the symbolism is pretty thick.)

We learn via a telephone and Skype calls back to the U.S., that though Christian and his wife have separated, she was planning to join him for the wedding. When she changes her mind despite his declaration that he’s stopped drinking, it becomes obvious that things haven’t been going so well for him. Clearly uncomfortable in his father’s house, he spends a lot of time leading up to the wedding with Oliver’s close-knit clan and their friends. During one of these gatherings Christian learns that Charlotte once worked as a housekeeper for Henry and he grabs hold of this fact like a starving dog with a bone. Connecting the dots, he begins asking pointed questions and angrily confronts Henry, believing that his father’s infidelity led to his mother’s unhappiness and subsequent suicide. “It was a complicated time,” Henry tries to explain. “I wanted to be happy.”

Photo: Mark Rogers

Christian is then bent on telling Oliver about Henry’s affair, believing that his friend deserves to know and that the truth will in fact be liberating for everyone involved. As in many a drama, things come to a head during a wedding scene, as Christian—hung over from the previous night’s blowout at a bar—gets re-plastered at his father and Anna’s reception. As things spiral completely out of control, curiosity (and dread) keep the viewer rapt, despite reservations we might have about the plausibility of some of the characters’ actions. (We also find out that Walter once took the fall for Henry when they were in business together, adding to the latter’s list of transgressions and the film’s pile-up of resentments.) When another—inevitable—secret is revealed, things take a turn for the tragic, as the unraveling Christian takes down almost everyone around him.

Whereas Ibsen’s play highlighted the tragic irony of the those with good intentions, The Daughter focuses more on how the “sins” of one individual eventually wreak havoc on two entire families. As over-the-top as some of the characters seem at times, and one does lose patience and sympathy, it’s hard not to get caught up in this story of human weakness, shame, hurt and duplicity; themes that are as relevant today as in the 19th century.